


Falling From the Sky, Calling From the Graves

by galacticproportions



Series: Reckonings [1]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Communication, Gen, Grieving, M/M, Post-War, Practical Matters, SPOILERS for TROS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:53:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21973153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticproportions/pseuds/galacticproportions
Summary: Rey and Poe face each other, and themselves, in the wake of the Resistance victory.
Relationships: Poe Dameron & Rey, Poe Dameron/Finn, potential poe dameron/finn/rey
Series: Reckonings [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1583443
Comments: 18
Kudos: 234





	Falling From the Sky, Calling From the Graves

**Author's Note:**

> This is just the first step on the path of learning and healing that I want for our heroes, and for all of us. 
> 
> Title is from "Forgiveness" by Patty Griffin.

Rey brings the Falcon down in the clearing, maybe for the last time. BB-8 rolls down the ramp and bustles off to find Poe; the whole length of the third hyperlane, the droid had switched to grumbling and fretting around the sound he makes for Poe's name.

Starting two local days from now, the Resistance will disband. There are plenty of First Order-occupied worlds, but no central threat; plenty of planets and even systems with some form of governance, more or less functional, but no New Republic. The war isn't over, it's just...dispersed. So some of them will go offer their skills to the fight on other fronts. And some of them will go home and try to repair damage: replant fields, rebuild cities, restore ecosystems.

Rey has no place to go to, just people.

Rose intercepts her with a warm handgrip as she comes into the center of camp, asking if she can help with last-minute repairs to the transports or if she needs food first. They work side by side, sharing a music pod and a canteen of tea, astringent and refreshing. When that's done, D'Acy wants to ask if she picked up any intel about the systems around Tatooine, and after she's delivered herself of the few scraps she managed to gather, Connix commandeers her to load the heavy equipment while other people form a line, passing crates of smaller stuff, munitions and rations and medical supplies into the dim metallic caves of the cargo holds.

By the time they break, darkness has settled fully over the camp, except for a few cool lights in people's tents and the spit of an arc welder under one of the remaining X-wings. There's also an arrhythmic bluish-purple flicker coming from the supply shed. Stepping softly, she sees BB-8 first, then Poe's hand passing in front of the droid's array, somehow casting not shadow but brief light.

“Poe?” she says as quietly and evenly as she can, but he startles anyway. BB-8 rocks and chirps her name-sound and an invitation, and she says, “Can I?”

“Sure,” he says. “All for one and one for all.”

She doesn't know quite how to take that, but she enters anyway, and sits, just as he says, “I'm sorry. That was shitty.”

If he says so. “What are you doing?”

“We got this batch of eremini vaccine in with one of the med drops before Exegol. I wanna send the transports off with some doses, but the problem is about half of it's expired. BB-8's checking it for me, if you run the bad ones under UV you can kind of see there's this purple scum at the top.”

That explains the flicker: she can't see the UV beam itself, just the glow it calls out. “Can I help?”

“Sure,” he says, readily enough. “I'll scan, you sort.”

It isn't really a two-humans-and-one-droid job, she quickly realizes—all she's doing is putting the doses in the piles that he'd be putting them in anyway. But they fall into a rhythm, all the same. “When are these transports leaving?” she asks, wondering if they should be working faster.

“With the rest. Couple days.”

“So it's not a rush job, then.”

“No.”

She waits.

“I don't sleep great when Finn's away, you may have noticed,” he says. “And I'm too tired to do anything...major. Or complicated. But you know, there's always something.”

There's been _so much_ something. Hundreds of somethings since the first wave of hugging and sobbing subsided, though there's still plenty of both breaking out here and there. Rey's trip to Tatooine let her miss a lot of it, but it closed over her head instantly the minute she stepped off the Falcon, like the moist air of the forest. And while Finn's been back and forth working with Lando and Jannah and the rest of the deserters to help orient and, when possible, relocate stormtroopers, Poe's mostly been here, taking reports from battles elsewhere, coordinating recovery efforts, superintending demobilization. Most of which is both major and complicated. He's got a good team—Connix in particular is a beast for organization—but everyone's looking to him to hold the center while there still is one, and it's telling on him.

“I noticed,” she says, answering the part he said out loud. That's all she can ever really do, with Poe. With Finn it's much easier: everything she says to him, together or apart, is in answer to a question he's always already halfway asking in the Force, and every moment of connection makes the next one stronger.

(It's also how she knows about their nights together, both sleeping and very much not. She'd had every intention of giving Finn and some of the other Awakened personnel a lesson in shielding before she left for Tatooine, but she hadn't gotten around to it, because of all the somethings. So from a certain point of view, it was her own fault: the waves of need, of pleasure, of contentment, that rolled over the camp the nights that Finn was back on base, sending shivers through her—through everyone, probably everyone—making her gasp and clench her thighs and subside onto her bedroll, standard Corellian Fire Brigade issue and smelling like damp.)

From Poe she gets nothing, nothing like that at all. The angles of his shoulders and his eyebrows, sure; the tone and inflection of his voice. But those are slower, hard to read, less literal than the swift flow between mind and mind, between her and Finn, or her and—

She closes her eyes as the grief and loss wash through her, the emptiness where there was someone waiting— _always,_ she'd almost thought, but it wasn't always at all, not even close. It wasn't a full standard year, wasn't even enough for her courses to come a third time.

(The first time was just after she picked up her training with Leia. She'd been staggered by the pain, even though it was nowhere near as bad as injuries she'd sustained scavenging or fighting, and then confused by the blood. It was just a surprise, and Leia had startled too, pulled back, and then softened just perceptibly, sat her down and explained in the most matter-of-fact way possible why it was happening now and not before. She'd fetched Rey a few options from their precious supply stores, talked her through using them. The cadence of Leia's voice had altered just slightly then, as if she was recalling and repeating an explanation she'd received from someone else.)

Poe's hand is on her arm. “Hey,” he's saying. “You okay?”

 _Not really,_ she wants to say, throwing him back at himself, but she says, “I'm okay. I'm fine, really.” After all, she's here, she's alive, they're alive, they're _winning,_ the past is dead.

He pulls his hand back, almost snatches. “Fine.”

“What!” she nearly shouts. _“What._ What was so wrong about that.” Across from him, BB-8 makes a quiet distress noise: he doesn't like it when his humans fight.

Poe gathers himself visibly. “I'm sorry,” he says.

It's the second time this evening, and she's had enough of it. “Don't be sorry. Just be _nice.”_

“I'm trying,” he says, so nakedly that she can't help but be stricken. “I'm—look, I just hate when people don't tell me things. There was a whole thing about that that you missed, back before Crait, but trust me, it was stupid, and I fucked up, and I'd _already_ fucked up, and then with you and Finn keeping secrets all over the place, I just—I know I need to let it go. I'm sorry. Fuck, I know you said don't be, but I really am.”

Rey gets it. She just wishes she were sure it was all there were to get. She thinks, _He doesn't know how much he matters to me._ It's so frustrating. She's so tired of fighting, tired of not being understood. “I miss him,” she says.

Poe stiffens.“I'm sorry,” she says. “I know. I know what he did to you. I know, I really do, he did it to me too, but you see, he was _there,_ after that, he was always there.”

She stumbles, telling it, fighting the feeling that she shouldn't have to tell it, that he should just know. “He was there,” she repeats. “He was in my head. And I didn't always want him there, even, mostly I _didn't,_ but I could count on him, in a sort of way. Everything that hurt me, everything I was ashamed about or afraid of—he already knew it. And when we were fighting—fighting the Emperor, at the end—and I dropped the saber, Leia's saber, I knew he'd catch it. I _knew_ it, just as surely as I know you're sitting here. We didn't have to—”

She breaks off. BB-8 rolls over and butts up against her side.

“You didn't have to talk about it,” Poe supplies, when enough time has passed that it's clear she's not going to finish her sentence.

“That's it,” she says. “We just—Poe, _I'm_ sorry.”

“C'mere,” he says, hunching and scooting closer. “Hold you okay?”

“Okay.” He's warm, solid, but she can't quite settle against him. “I was alone,” she says into his shoulder. “For a long time, so—And then I thought that's what being not-alone was.”

“It isn't,” Poe says. “It's harder.”

“Yeah, I'm starting to get that.” Poe snorts, and Rey laughs too, a little, and relaxes a little more, half back on her own heels, half against his chest.

“I'll tell you something too,” he says. “Since we're telling each other things. When Leia handed off command to me—I didn't want that. I never wanted it.”

“You just wanted to do what she said.”

She feels him tense again. “You're not—”

“I can't,” she says firmly. “I've never been able to, with you. I'm just guessing, but I'm right, aren't I?”

“So you were paying attention. I wasn't sure.”

That stings again, and she wants to push back, tell him that of course she was. But it wouldn't be true, would it? He's not being unfair this time.

“Yeah,” he's going on. “Her or somebody. The fuckup I was talking about before, it was because Holdo—shit, you never even met her—she wouldn't tell me, wouldn't tell any of us what we were supposed to do. What she was planning. She _had_ a fuckin' plan, she just—anyway, point is, I _want_ to follow orders. Good orders. I don't wanna have to make 'em up.”

“But you had to,” Rey says. “So you did.”

“Yeah, but not well.”

Oh. “Poe, you did fine. You did well, you did do well.” She lets her hand come up to hold his head, sink into his hair and against his skull, pulling them even closer to each other. “If it weren't for your part of the fight, mine would have been for nothing.”

And that's what's true, that's where the truth is. It feels like something dawning, only it hurts: how caught up she'd been in her own story. How every time someone pushed her to think about herself instead of her friends, she'd fallen into line with it, and left them. How without them, she truly is just Rey, a scavenger, alone.

She wants to tell Poe that, but she thinks she might only be able to say it once, and there's someone else who needs to hear it too. “When's Finn due back?” she asks.

“Said he'd be back to help with the demob. I thought you guys told each other everything.” But he's teasing now, no edge to it; he presses his cheek to the side of her head, just once. They disentangle, and Rey's hands go to her hair, calluses catching on the bindings as they do when she takes it down before sleep. “I should go to bed,” she says. “Want to finish this first?”

“Yeah, I guess we might as well.” He thumps BB-8, who rolls into churring activity again, a note of reproach in his beeps. “You could come sleep next to me tonight,” Poe says, frowning at the remaining doses of vaccine. “Just next to. Not, you know, _with._ If you want.”

Rey thinks about it. When they were on board the Falcon, on the few missions the three of them took on together, she was a thin wall apart from him and Finn, in the bed Han had put in for himself and Leia after the Battle of Endor. Before Ben was born. There's no time she remembers when she slept close to another person. “Not tonight,” she says. “But maybe soon.”

**Author's Note:**

> This work now has a sequel! It may acquire more sequels! Who can say? No one can see the future!


End file.
